MinuteEarth

The Bird Poop That Changed The World

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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:

  • Guano: seabird (or bat) poop. From the indigenous Peruvian word “wanu”, meaning “manure that’s good for fertilizer"
  • Manure: animal poop used as fertilizer (typically cow or pig poop)
  • Fertilizer: a chemical-containing substance added to soil to provide nutrients to plants
  • Nitrate mining: digging up the naturally occurring solid form of the element nitrogen (sodium nitrate)
  • Phosphate mining: digging up the naturally occurring solid form of the element phosphorus
  • Haber-Bosch process: the major industrial method to take nitrogen gas out of the air and convert it to ammonia


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